Sedo

On Friday, some Sedo users received a malware warning on their browsers when they tried to access Sedo’s website. In addition, Google added a warning on search results pages. I wrote an article urging users to be cautious when using Sedo.

After internal technicians examined the website, Sedo issued a statement later on in the afternoon to tell people that there were no malware threats, and this afternoon, the company made a more comprehensive  announcement, giving the “all clear” to customers:

“Sedo would like to follow up on security concerns raised this past Friday by visitors attempting to access the Sedo.com and Sedo.co.uk websites using either the Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Despite the warnings displayed by Google and their browser partners, a thorough review and investigation of the Sedo marketplace, domain parking, and website generally showed no signs of a security breach or any violation of the integrity of the Sedo services or user privacy. Let us be clear: at no point was malware distributed via Sedo.

What we did discover is that  Google’s security warning Friday was likely triggered by code initiated by our website banner rotation system (a third party software). Although this software code did not create a security risk, Google misinterpreted the situation and wrongly issued the security warning. All warnings have now been removed, and the situation is completely resolved.  Sedo’s technical teams are working with our banner partners to avoid future false alarms, and  therefore our website ad server system—including the news section on the MySedo login page—is still down for maintenance. We appreciate your patience. “

I saw the Domain Name News article about Sedo and the apparent malware warning some users are encountering when they visit the site, and I want to reiterate that you should use caution if you need to visit Sedo’s website today until it’s cleared up.

I am not sure what the issue is, but there is an error message in Google results when you search for Sedo that says “This site may harm your computer.”

I reached out to several people at Sedo a moment ago, and I will provide an update as soon as I have one. For now, I’d avoid visiting the website until you get the all clear. Hopefully the issue is resolved ASAP.

*** UPDATED – 8/24/12 – 12:52PM EDT ***

Sedo just issued a statement:

“Sedo has been made aware that visitors attempting to access the Sedo.com or Sedo.co.uk websites using either the Firefox or Chrome web browsers have been receiving security alerts preventing entry. While the Sedo website is still accessible without warning on both Internet Explorer and Safari, we immediately began investigating the root cause of these warnings to ensure there was in fact no risk to our users or visitors to the site. At this time we can report that no threats have been detected and our technical teams are currently working with Google and others to ensure these false warnings are immediately removed.“